Friday, February 12, 2010

Get me a drink ... or I'll start talking Dirty

But first: in honor of Valentine's Day this Sunday, I present one of the funniest explanations of the love day ever written. No, I didn't write it; if I did it wouldn't be funny, cause I don't roll that way, baby. It's from "It's Me, Margie" over at The Lipstick Chronicles, and here ya go with the link, but before I go, big ol' smooches to the ladies of The Seven but hearty handshakes to the gents cause that's the way I roll too:

No sugar, foam or whip. No caramel, chocolate, Irish creme, hazelnut, blackberry, doughnut, or anything else that smells like it should hang from the rearview mirror of my Civic.

Just plain old Joe. If you please. But only if you'll join me.For that's the true glory of coffee: the glorious companions the bean draws to my table.I wish I was wordsmith enough to describe the utter joy of the morning's first sip. Of the gentle caress of hot porcelain on my winter-chilly hand. Of the abstract art the half-and-half makes becoming One with the liquid black.

But I am not skilled enough. I am not worthy.

So allow me to introduce you to someone who is. Who can perfectly explain what I like to call,

An Ode to Hot-Leaded Coffee

And please be sure to watch it all. The end

is the cream in this digital coffee.

Hey, I have a new website! Well, it's the old site, but it's happy shiny fresher now with a brand-new design, new photos, new biography and author Q&A ... and an excerpt from my upcoming thriller, Torn Apart. Click on http://www.shanegericke.com/and let me know what you think!

Thanks, Sophie! I did it solely to justify leaning against a factory wall in leather and jeans :-) Seriously, the designers did a crackerjack job turning Shaneyworld into something nice. My various hats are off to them, cause I know from my experience that building a nice website is NOT easy.

Ah, hazelnut. Of all the flavored coffees, that's the closest to good I can find. I'm no purist on coffee; like Mysti, I can drink overboiled dregs and believe they taste like candy. But most flavors taste so Pine-Sol-artificial they make me shudder.

There MUST be good flavored brands out there, no? If so, let me know. Thoughg if anyone suggests General Foods International Coffees from the '80s ...

Mmmmmm, Mysti! Burnt coffee in Styrofoam! Brings me back to my newspaper days, when that's pretty much all we drank. Or, in those years the paper was too damn cheap to have the real deal in the Bunn pots, coffee in little cardboard cups (with ear-flap handles!) that dropped from the vend-all machine for a quarter a gulp. Now there was coffee you could use to grease your typewriter.

Oh, and everyone, I apologize for today's oddly-spaced paragraphs and jumble of type sizes. Blogger software is a pain in the ass and doesn't do what I ask sometimes. Kinda like me when I don't have enough coffee; ask the missus ...

I like plain ol' coffee, too ... though like Soph, I admit to an indulgence in flavors during the holiday season. And on occasion, when I can find a really good cafe au lait or latte (hard, actually, in America), nothing ever tastes as good.

Here's to the bean, bro!! With or without additives, it's a lifesaver! :)

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Susan C. Shea debuts a new series, a French village mystery, Love & Death in Burgundy in spring 2017 (St. Martin's Minotaur). The third in her Dani O'Rourke series came out in Feb. 2016. She lives in Marin County, CA.

Mondays with Terry

Terry Shames writes the Macavity Award-winning Samuel Craddock series, set in small-town Texas. In 2015 BookPeople dubbed her one of the top five Texas mystery authors.

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Catriona McPherson is the Anthony, Agatha, Macavity, IndieFab and Lefty winning author of the DANDY GILVER series set in Scotland in the 1920s, as well as two darker stand-alones AS SHE LEFT IT and THE DAY SHE DIED. Catriona lives in northern California with a black cat and a scientist.

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Fridays with Danny

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